Inside Penn State football great Matt Millen’s celebratory return to broadcasting after heart transplant

Updated Apr 15, 2019; Posted Apr 15, 2019

Penn State great Matt Millen in the Big Ten Network broadcast booth at Beaver Stadium before the Blue-White game on April 13, 2019. Saturday was Millen's return since undergoing a heart transplant on Christmas Eve, 2018.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

Tony DeSanti has been doing what he does for a while, more than three decades. And he’s done it for all of the major networks – CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX, the last both at the home office and as a partner of the Big Ten Network.

As a live event producer of BTN sports telecasts, the 57-year-old Queens native and Iona College journalism grad coordinates everything you see during a college football game down to the second – the direction, the graphics, the information upon which the commentators will focus, the camera shots, all of it.

That takes preparation. It always involves a pre-production meeting with his staff on location the morning of a game. Usually that’s at the hotel where the network has put them up.

DeSanti is known for his personality. He’s a man who likes to laugh and keep his crews loose and happy as well as prepared.

At 9 a.m. on Saturday, he hosted the meet-up in his own suite, room 206 at the Residence Inn State College. But this wasn’t just any meeting. And he wasn’t divulging quite everything he had planned.

He had some surprises for his color analyst, “grenades” as he likes to call them, ready to throw at Matt Millen. Oh, they were good ones, too.

Because this wasn’t a normal telecast. First of all, in the contest, nothing was at stake. It was merely Penn State’s Blue-White Game intra-squad scrimmage. Second, it was Millen’s first game back in the broadcast booth since the Purdue at Nebraska game on Sept. 29. He had left with everything at stake – namely his life.

The former Penn State defensive tackle and All-Pro linebacker was known as a winner who persevered, who found a way to contribute not just as a young buck but as a veteran when his moderate athletic gifts had mostly left him. But by early December, he was losing what easily could have been his final battle at age 60. A lethal condition known as amyloidosis had attacked his heart and left it at 30 percent of its normal capacity.

He spent more than three months in Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, N.J., on a waiting list for a new heart. His turn came and a suitable donor was finally found on Christmas Eve. His recovery since then has been, if not miraculous, something close to it.

Penn State great Matt Millen acknowledges the crowd from the Big Ten Network booth during the Blue-White game on April 13, 2019. Millen had a heart transplant in December.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

So, DeSanti wanted this telecast to be special. But the producer didn’t want to tip his hand. He did have to mention to the production crew and BTN play-by-play announcer Lisa Byington that they were not going to a commercial break between the first and second quarters.

“We all wanted it to be a surprise,” said Byington on Sunday, “to get a genuine reaction from him.”

Grenade #1: Millen was going to get an announcement from Beaver Stadium public address announcer Dean DeVore welcoming him back. Millen was not informed. Everyone else knew.

Byington, a Michigan native who’s known and worked with Millen for four years, is young enough to be his daughter but has sort of a sassy little-sis relationship with him. They love to jab and laugh at each other.

Their friendship is based on her distant hatred of him as a Detroit Lions fan who grew up in Kalamazoo. Byington knew him merely as the widely disparaged NFL exec he was, so reviled by the end of his tenure that he spawned a virtual slogan – Fire Millen:

“When I found out I was going to be on his broadcast crew four years ago, I thought: Oh, great. Kill me now. I thought he was a lazy, know-it-all jerk.

“Once I got to know him, I told him, ‘Look, I gave myself a zero-percent chance of liking you.’ He said, ‘Well, at least you kept an open mind about it.’”

The Big Ten Network celebrates the return of Penn State great Matt Millen to the broadcast booth with a heart-shaped cake. It was Millen's first broadcast since undergoing a heart transplant on Christmas Eve, 2018.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

At the end of the pre-production meeting, without releasing cat from bag, she probed the always businesslike Millen for his demeanor as he approached a momentous homecoming. She joked sarcastically:

“I know you’re such an emotional guy. You’re gonna have to keep your emotions in check.”

He laughed and replied, “Hey, you know me, Lise.”

Millen is usually anything but maudlin. Loves to laugh? Yes. Tearful moments in public? Not so much.

It’s not that he’s stoic like some flinty old introvert, not at all. It’s just that he can’t take anything that seriously – especially himself. It’s at once one of the most endearing and occasionally frustrating things about him. If it’s possible to be unpretentious to a fault, well, that’s who he is.

Example: Remember Zubaz, those comfy, sort of too tight, cotton sweatpants from the ‘90s? He owns a stack and admits to wearing them out, sometimes out and about.

Further, if anyone starts getting Jim Nantz-level earnest about almost anything, he’s throwing a challenge flag. Had he gotten wind that any sort of honorarium was in the works, it would have immediately brought on the get-outa-here in him. Yes, he was happy to be alive. Now, let’s move on.

So, DeSanti and Byington and everyone in on the deal at Beaver Stadium on Saturday knew to keep Millen in the dark.

Further, a smiling Byington, afraid that her partner wouldn’t throw the crowd and the viewers a bone, added this:

“What I need you to do is, I need you to pretend like you care. So, people don’t think you’re basically a jerk.”

Millen smiled and promised he would. He had no idea he wouldn’t have to fake it.

Through the public lens, a juncture in Millen’s life is often lost. It came between his playing and executive tenures. Between his All-America (1978) and All-Pro (1984, 1985) designations, his 4 Super Bowl wins with 3 different teams (1980 and 1983 Raiders, 1989 49ers, 1991 Redskins) and then his tumultuously failed tenure as a vice president with the Detroit Lions (2001-08).

It was the period during the late 1990s when FOX was clearly grooming him to be the next great NFL game analyst. He had not only been encouraged to enter television by former Raiders coach John Madden, not merely trained in the trade by the most celebrated TV analyst in NFL history, he was going to be the next Madden.

Which struck Millen as funny. Because he had pretty much entered the business on a lark. Prodded by Madden, he went through an audition at CBS in New York with Dick Stockton in 1992, received the tape back in the mail several days later and watched it with wife Pat.

Her succinct appraisal: “Well, I guess you won’t be doing that for a living.”

His: “I sucked. I thought it was terrible.”

CBS disagreed: "They called two days later and said: ‘We wanna give you a full schedule.’ I was like: Man, this place has low standards. That’s great!”

By the cusp of the new millennium, Millen had switched over to FOX and was ticketed to be Madden’s replacement when he hopped networks. DeSanti was a FOX producer then and can attest:

“Had he not left for the Lions, I don’t think there was any question he would have been the new lead analyst when Madden left [for ABC in 2002]. The two lead producer-directors and the president of FOX Sports all loved Matt. I think there would have been a lot of people in Matt’s corner to push him through.”

Millen had the same easy, extemporaneous style and the same way of focusing on what was happening on the field rather than what was prepared on his sheet. Madden tutored him that way.

As he did his preparation for a game. The Raiders coach taught him to study tape, learn players, develop deep and nuanced opinions of them, and then refuse to back down from those appraisals:

“John told me: ‘You can never be wrong, because they’re your opinions.’”

But educated ones, as long as he did the prep work.

BTN broadcast team Lisa Byington and Matt Millen tape intro segues before the Blue-White game on Saturday. (PennLive/David Jones)

Byington and DeSanti each have marveled at the work Millen invests into watching tape without first reading anything about players. More like an assistant coach or player personnel staffer, he’ll sequester himself in a university’s position-group meeting room on a Wednesday, then Thursday and even Friday before a game and will spend hours looking at videotape provided by the school.

During the preproduction meeting to which PennLive was granted access, Millen’s appraisals of each PSU player were detailed and specific. He sometimes couldn’t immediately recall their names, but always their numbers – because his opinions were based on the practice video he’d watched himself, not anything he’d read or been told.

Just like when he was a player, Millen is about his work to the point that anything interfering with the job is superfluous to the point of annoyance. So, here Millen was immersed in his profession on Saturday – such that it was, an intra-squad scrimmage played at 60% speed with no relation to an actual Big Ten battle – and it kept being interrupted by tributes to him. Yet, everything was so nice and thoughtful and heartfelt. And that did matter to him. He was having a tough time with all of this.

Before the game, he went down on the field, hoping to get a glimpse of some players to watch and coaches to talk to. Instead, he was greeted by empty turf with the players headed in from warm-ups and suited BTN execs there to welcome him back.

Matt Millen signs autographs for Penn State fans before Saturday's Blue-White game at Beaver Stadium.

Now 61, Millen’s stride appears strong again. On the way to the field and back, he looked like any man his age, only a little more fit and purposeful. His new heart is clearly about its business, just as he would have it. Though, on the way back, his pace was hardly tested because he kept having to pause and sign autographs.

Back up in the booth on the 2nd floor of the press box, less than an hour before kick, here came the PSU broadcast team of his Nittany Lion predecessor Jack Ham and play-by-play partner Steve Jones to welcome him. And then, a bigger surprise: his old Salt & Pepper DT bookend from the late ‘70s Lions, Bruce Clark, now back living in Centre County.

Three of the best players in Penn State history -- left to right, Jack Ham, Matt Millen and Bruce Clark -- get reacquainted in the BTN broadcast booth before Saturday's Blue-White Game at Beaver Stadium.

Finally, the game began and Byington opened with an unrehearsed and heartfelt intro setting the stage for Millen’s return. A gathering of about 30 BTN employees saluted him on tape. He genuinely enjoys Byington and it was all fine.

But the game now, right? Time to do the job.

There was no competition here to document, so Millen’s mandate was to give Penn State fans what he knew they wanted – honest appraisals of both the potential and performance of the Lions, especially the kids they’ve not seen much of.

This was vintage Millen. He had abundantly praised a pair of true freshmen during the pre-production meeting based on the tape he’d watched – running back Noah Cain and linebacker Brandon Smith. Here they were meeting in a single scoring play. Cain threaded down the sideline doing exactly what Millen had said he would, finding running angles just evasive enough to shed tacklers but direct enough to maintain momentum. One of the defenders who got a pad on him was Smith:

“That’s great second effort and poor tackling, all in one play. … Smith has to make that play. He came in at a bad angle. He has to get more on top. Make the runner make the decision, not you.”

And they might have caught his emotions off-guard a couple of times. That lack of a commercial break between the first and second quarters? All of a sudden DeVore was directing the crowd of 50,000 to look up to the booth. And here, everyone was standing up, all to look at him and applaud. PSU head coach James Franklin was urging them on from the field.

It might have been the loudest ovation of the day. Millen, in spite of himself, was obviously touched.

“As much as he tries to downplay it, Penn State is home to him,” said Byington. “To have the moment where he returns to the booth, and have it be his home and to look around.

“He’s so self-deprecating that maybe he doesn’t realize how much he means to the school. But to stand there and see everyone turn and face him, cheering for him and his return, I think it hit him at that moment, the impact of what his return really meant.”

DeSanti’s Grenade #2: Here was Houston Texans and former Penn State coach Bill O’Brien, also on tape, saluting one of his favorite NFL players, a tough, not especially speedy interior linebacker after his own heart. Millen loved it. Still, he was getting edgy at all the attention.

But boy, Grenade #3. This one DeSanti saved until the second half. Here were all the nurses, more than a dozen of them, who had stayed with him all of those 98 days at Beth Israel Medical Center while he waited for his transplant. He got to know them all by name. They became his family and vice versa. This clearly got him, right in the heart.

Soon after, came a mention of his wife Pat in the fourth quarter. And he volunteered to viewers: “She’s 5-2 and 8-10 all at the same time. She’s the boss.”

That was Millen’s limit. Byington next to him in the booth and DeSanti down in the production truck both knew it was coming:

“Let’s watch the game. You guys are making me goofy.”

When the half-speed game with no win, no loss and no consequences was finally over, Millen removed his headset, came over to get his jacket and said to me: “That was brutal.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant trying to analyze a non-contest, his comeback performance, or having to absorb all that attention. I didn’t ask for a clarification. Off he went to hang out with Clark and laugh about real games and good times.

BTN analyst Matt Millen watches as Penn State players enter the field just before the Blue-White game on Saturday. (PennLive/David Jones)

On Sunday night, I asked Millen about whether tearful releases in public are easy or difficult for him. He knew where I was going and I heard in his tone a smidge of not-this-again:

“If it happens, it happens. Look, I’m not trying to hide anything. I am what I am. Whatever shows up, shows up. It’s not easy or hard. That once it happened yesterday, what do I care? If I get a couple tears, I get a couple tears."

What about in normal, day-to-day circumstances?

“That’s the way am then, too. Every now and then, Pat and I will be talking and something will touch her emotionally and it does nothing to me. Other times I might be watching a dumb TV show and it’ll get to me.”

Is he embarrassed if that happens in front of others? Like our Greatest Generation dads might have been?

“Nah, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. It is what it is.”

All right, then. All that said, what sort of day was Saturday for him?